


On What They Fall

by profdanglais



Series: Secret Things [9]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drinking, F/M, Heavy Drinking, Idiots in Love, Mentions of Attempted Suicide, Mutual Pining, Secret love, a little bit captain duckling modern au, but Killian has to sort himself out before he can accept her love, for real you will want to bang their heads together, or even see that it exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-10-28 09:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profdanglais/pseuds/profdanglais
Summary: Killian Jones is an angry young man. He has no family and few friends, and he’s stuck in a small town where everyone views him with fear and suspicion.Everyone but Emma Swan.She’s everything he wants in life and everything he can’t have. What he doesn’t know is that she wants him too.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s past one in the morning when she arrives at the bar where he’s drinking, a dingy little dive near the harbour. Young women rarely frequent it unless they mean business, which is one of the reasons he goes there. She though, _she_, with her hair and her face and her body in that soft pink dress, she stands out like… like an inflamed digitus primus manus.

She’d laugh if he said that to her, he thinks.

_(Like a what now?_

_A sore thumb, Swan. _

_Well, why can’t you just say that?)_

One a.m., he thinks. Not her birthday anymore.

\--

Her eyes find him the minute she walks through the door. He’s slouching against the bar, all lean limbs and nonchalance, his eyes on the game of pool going on in the corner. Her mouth goes dry at the sight of him, as it always does. 

She wipes her palms on her skirt and makes her approach. 

“Hey, Killian.”

He turns and a small smile quirks the corners of his mouth, crinkles the edges of his eyes. It looks involuntary.

“Swan,” he replies.

She swallows hard as his voice seems to stroke her, sends a shiver up her spine. “Hi.” She attempts a smile. “I’m, uh, back for the weekend.” 

“So I see,” he says, pushing himself upright in one liquid motion. “Happy birthday.”

She tries not to read anything into the fact that he remembered. If he did remember. If he didn’t just deduce it from her presence here in the bar she was too young to enter until yesterday. She tries, but the hope in her heart doesn’t listen.

“Thanks,” she says.

He takes a small box out of his jacket pocket, square and flat and tied with a red ribbon that’s slightly crushed. He holds it out to her like a challenge.

“What— what’s this?”

There’s tension in his smile now, a brittle stiffness in his posture. “It’s a present, Swan, surely you’ve seen them before,” he snarks. “Quite a few of them I shouldn’t wonder.”

He’s deflecting, she thinks. He’s embarrassed to be offering her something.

She understands him far better than he thinks.

She takes the box from him with a shy smile and he relaxes just a fraction, but when she starts to untie the ribbon he almost lunges forward to stop her, letting his fingers brush hers just lightly before he yanks his hand away again. His fist clenches at his side. “Don’t open it here,” he says quietly.

“Why no—”

“Just, please, Swan. Don’t.”

“Okay.” She tucks the box into her bag and starts to ask him how he’s been when from the corner of her eye she sees a petite brunette waving at him from the pool table. He nods at her and gives her a wink, and the smile he directs at Emma turns dismissive. _No,_ she thinks, feeling desperate. _Not yet._ He can’t leave now, it’s too soon, she’s barely seen him. She’s been looking forward to this for weeks and he’s just going to ditch her after a two minute conversation?

“If you’ll excuse me, Swan,” he says, but she doesn’t move.

“Another one, then,” she sniffs, letting her eyes flick towards the pool table.

His eyes are shuttered, defensive. “Aye,” he growls, “What of it?”

“Nothing, nothing.” She attempts to walk back from her catty remark. “It’s just... well, I guess it must be fun, all the attention. Women falling all over you wherever you go. But don’t you ever think—” She’s had a few drinks in other bars, liquid courage to help her come here and speak to him, and it loosens her tongue a bit too much. “Don’t you want to fall in love?” 

His mouth twists. “I am in love,” he says harshly. The words seem wrenched from him. “For all the bloody good it does me.”

She starts to laugh, but then she sees his face. “You’re serious!”

He smirks. Her heart clenches, stumbles in a chest that’s gone painfully tight as the room seems to shrink around her. Of course she knows he sleeps around, he has since they were teenagers and never bothered to hide it. She’s even teased him about it, burying her hurt in humour and clinging to the small consolation that with her, with _them_, it’s different. He _talks_ to her, sometimes for hours, and she’s always thought that maybe… once he stops being so angry at the world… maybe they might find their way to each other. She’s prepared to wait for him, for as long as it takes. But this… this she didn’t see coming.

“Who is she?” Emma asks, and her voice sounds so small.

His is flat, emotionless. “Someone who will never return my affections,” he says.

“So that’s why you...” She gestures at the brunette.

“Aye.”

“Does it help?”

“Not really.”

“Then why don’t you stop?”

He laughs, bitter and angry. “And do what instead? Sit at home and think about her? Fantasise about all the things I want and can’t ha—” he cuts himself off.

“You could—”

“Swan, please. I really don’t wish to discuss this with you. Just let me do my ‘man-whoring’ as you so charmingly call it, in peace.”

She puts her hand on his arm, holding her breath so he won’t hear how much touching him affects it. His arm is warm even through his jacket, the muscles hard beneath her fingers. Her heart tries to beat clear out of her chest. “I regret I ever said that,” she whispers.

He shrugs. “It’s okay. It’s the truth.”

He sounds breathless, and his jaw is tense. He pulls away from her touch, steps back. Gives her a small, mocking bow. “See you around, Swan,” he smirks. She stands for a minute, groping desperately for calm, and when she goes to look for him again both he and the brunette are gone.

\--

She opens his present in bed, curled under the blankets in a private cocoon. It’s a pendant, a delicate rendering of a swan in silver filigree. It’s gorgeous. Her fingers tremble as she removes the necklace she’s worn for years, the one her high school boyfriend gave her. She has no idea why she’s kept it this long, perhaps as a reminder that sometimes when you think someone’s an asshole it’s because he is. She replaces it with Killian’s gift, then closes her fist around it and lets her tears fall. She would have been so happy receiving this just a few hours ago, she thinks. This thoughtful, personal gift. But now that she knows he’s _in love_, it feels like something he’d give a little sister, not a woman he might someday… but she can’t finish that thought.

\--

She seeks him out the next day, down at the docks where he’s working on his boat. An old wreck of a thing he bought on _his_ twenty-first birthday, one he’s been working to fix up for nearly two years.

“Are you ever going to be done with that?” she calls.

He grins, bright as the sunlight. “A ship is always a work in progress, Swan,” he says, patting the mast fondly. “But she’ll be seaworthy soon enough.”

She comes on deck and as she approaches his gaze falls on the pendant, framed by the low neck of her shirt. Something flashes across his face, gone in the blink of an eye but she sees it, and she _hopes_ again.

“I came to thank you for this,” she says, brushing her fingertips over the swan. “It’s beautiful.”

He shoves one hand into his jeans pocket, waves the other one dismissively. “It’s nothing,” he says.

“It’s not _nothing_, Killian, it was very thoughtful—”

His hand closes into a fist. “Don’t make a big deal of it,” he snarls. Temper snaps in his eyes but she doesn’t flinch. It’s always there, this anger, tightly coiled inside him and just waiting for a trigger. She’s used to it. She gives it time to recede, which it does, quickly, leaving him looking contrite. “I’m glad you like it,” he whispers.

“I love it.” _I love you_.

They stand in silence for a moment as he looks at his feet and she tries to will him to stop, to look at her instead. When he doesn’t she sighs. “I’m going back to school this afternoon,” she says. “I’ll be home again at Thanksgiving.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you then,” he mumbles.

He doesn’t look at her as she gets back in her car and drives away.

\--

When she’s gone Killian kicks a coil of rope and then a bucket, then slumps against the boat’s rail, pounding it with his fist as he presses the heel of his other hand against his aching chest. He didn’t really think through how it would look, giving her that pendant. What she or anyone else might read into the gesture. He thought only that it was beautiful and she should have it. She deserves every beautiful thing, and it’s so rare he has a chance to offer her one.

He hopes she won’t tell her father who gave it to her. The sheriff is hostile enough as it is.

\--

When Killian first came to Storybrooke his anger was sharper, more volatile. Fresh from losing first his brother and then his parents, with no close family left and still eight months shy of his eighteenth birthday, he’d found himself unceremoniously deposited on the doorstep of his distant cousin Belle, a woman hardly older than he was himself, in a small American town where everything from his clothes to his accent to his furious grief seemed to offend people. His first day at school three boys followed him home, taunting him, and before he could think he lashed out with fury and with his fists. He wasn’t big or particularly strong, but he knew how to fight and how to do it dirty and he laid all three out flat in the middle of Main Street with almost the whole town watching. All of them, staring at him with expressions of horror and disgust, all plainly writing him off as a violent troublemaker who would come to no good.

All but one. Emma Swan never looked at him with anything but compassion, with _understanding_, like he was someone who mattered— even when her father hauled him away to spend the night in a holding cell.

She appeared in the sheriff’s station hours later, bearing a cup of cocoa and an extra blanket. “It gets cold in here at night,” she said, offering them to him through the bars of the cell. 

Killian stared at her, waiting for the punch line, but she just smiled. “Go on,” she said. “Trust me, you’ll need them both.” 

_Trust me._ He took them, his fingers brushing hers around the warm paper cup. He blamed the shock, the comedown from adrenaline, the soul-deep exhaustion and the terrible fear that he’d fucked everything up completely when he’d only been in this town a day, for the next words that came out of his mouth. 

“Are you an angel?”

She laughed. “No. I’m Emma, the sheriff’s daughter. Emma Swan.” She held out her hand again, this time for him to shake. He did, and felt the shock of the contact to the tips of his toes. Emma’s eyes grew wide and her smile softened, and when she withdrew her hand she held his heart in it. 

\--

He doesn't see Emma again until Christmas, when she and her friends return to his bar. Graham spots them instantly, sitting up straighter and waving them over, his face lit up with pleasure. Killian struggles not to envy the other man’s freedom to smile at Emma, to laugh and tease her. Graham is one of his few friends —too new in town to have any preconceptions about ‘that Jones boy’ and from the correct side of the pond, albeit the unfashionable side of the Irish Sea, Killian jokes when he wants to rile Graham a bit—but he’s also the Sheriff’s favourite deputy and a man that David would clearly welcome into his family with open arms, if the smile on his face whenever Emma and Graham are together is any indication. 

Graham greets Emma with a hug and a Merry Christmas, which she returns warmly. Killian’s jealousy is acid in his gut but he swallows it down, gives Emma a stiff nod and stands to go, to find someplace where he won’t be a third wheel. When Emma puts her hand on his arm to stop him he barely suppresses a flinch. Her touch burns him, makes him yearn for things that can never be his, and he is terrified of what he might do if it goes on too long. Carefully, he pulls away to just beyond her reach and hates himself for the hurt that flashes in her eyes. She tries so hard to be his friend, it’s not her fault he wants far more than friendship from her. 

“Do you have somewhere to be?” she attempts to tease him. 

He shrugs. “Just thought I’d give you two a chance to catch up.” 

“I saw Graham at Thanksgiving,” says Emma, and the acid threatens to consume him. Of course she did. Of _course_ Graham was invited to her family’s celebration. “I haven’t seen you since my birthday. How have you been?”

“Same as always, Swan, nothing ever changes for me,” he replies, trying not to let the bitterness choke him. “I go to work, help Belle at the library, fix my boat. That’s the extent of my existence.” 

She looks like she wants to hug him and he takes a step back, fights the urge to flee. He’ll never fathom why she finds him worth talking to, why she continually seeks him out. It was different when she lived in Storybrooke, they had things to talk about then, but now she’s in college and her world has opened up while Killian’s remains the same narrow slog through the days and weeks and years of pointless grind that’s all he has to look forward to in life. He can’t think of anything to say to her now. 

“I’m going to play some pool,” he says. “Happy Christmas, Swan.” 

\--

Emma fights her tears as she watches him go, pastes a smile on her face and turns back to Graham, whose bright, hopeful expression should be welcome but instead just makes her feel trapped. Her dad’s been dropping some less-than-subtle hints lately and she supposes she really should give Graham a chance. He's a great guy, sweet and funny, and she likes him a lot. He clearly likes her too, but he just doesn’t get her, doesn’t _see_ her the way Killian does. Killian sees everything she is, and he understands all of it in a way that Graham and her friends and even her parents could never hope to. 

He’s caught so deep in her heart she can’t extract him from it, not without ripping herself apart in the bargain. Not even to please her father. 

But Killian is across the room determinedly ignoring her, and Graham is charming and funny and _there_, making her laugh and delighting her friends, and she _likes_ him. When he asks her to dinner she hesitates, looks over to where Killian is leaning into a tall brunette, smiling his flirtatious smile as he toys with the ends of her hair. She swallows hard and pushes away her foolish hope. She says yes.

Graham is thrilled. He’ll pick her up tomorrow at seven, he says, and she agrees then leaves the bar before she can lose her hold on her tears. This is the right decision, she tells herself. Killian's _in love_ with someone who is clearly not her; he doesn’t want her as she wants him and she has to accept it. She can’t keep keeping her hopes up when all he ever does is crush them. 

Killian claps his friend on the back and listens to him enthuse about Emma, how beautiful and kind she is, how he’s never felt like this about anyone before. He keeps a smile plastered on his face and makes all the right noises, nods in all the right places until he can't take it anymore and he slips away, hunching his shoulders and stuffing his hands deep in his pockets as he walks home. His mind is in chaos and his heart feels _raw. _He has no idea what to do. 

He buys a bottle of rum from the convenience store then goes home, sits down at the kitchen table and proceeds to drink the whole thing, one shot after another until the glass becomes a pointless waste of effort and he just drinks straight from the bottle. When it’s empty he takes out the half bottle he already had and finishes that off. Then he digs out the sambuca Belle got as a gift last Christmas. It’s still unopened. He drinks it all. 

When Belle wakes up that morning she finds him sprawled on the floor, barely breathing. She calls an ambulance, clings to his hand as they race to the hospital. Killian’s eyes flutter open. “Belle,” he croaks. 

“I’m here,” she whispers. 

“Don’t— don’t call Emma,” Killian begs. “Please.”

Belle nods, understanding. “I won’t.” 

\--

At the hospital they pump his stomach. It saves his life, the doctor says. Acute alcohol poisoning can kill you.

“Shame it didn’t,” mutters Killian, and Belle looks at him sharply. She doesn’t think he did this on purpose but she’s not convinced it was wholly an accident.

“Killian I know you’re hurting but you have to stop doing this to yourself,” she insists, once the doctor has left. “Emma wouldn’t want—”

Killian pulls his hand from her grip. “Emma doesn’t give a damn,” he snaps.

“Now, you_ know_ that’s not true. She cares about you—”

He runs his hand over his face. “She’s a kind person, she cares about everyone. Not me in particular.”

Belle opens her mouth then closes it again. She’s tried to argue with him about this before but ultimately she knows there’s really no point— he’s got Emma on far too high a pedestal, he simply can’t believe she might love him.

And Belle knows from personal experience that he has to learn to love himself or he never will.

\--

They keep Killian in the hospital overnight for observation. The next morning he’s released, and Belle comes to drive him home. Though they’re only very distant cousins she loves him like much closer family, calling him her ‘little nephew’ when he cheekily refers to her as his ‘Auntie Belle.’ He was only meant to live with her until he turned eighteen, but by then they’d formed such a bond Belle offered to let him stay as long as he needed and he gratefully accepted. She doesn’t charge him rent but he insists on earning his keep, cleaning and cooking in addition to his job at the docks and his volunteer work at the library. He saves every penny he can and she knows one day he’ll leave. He was never meant to stay in Storybrooke forever. 

When they drive by Granny’s Diner and see Emma and Graham walking through its front gate together, Belle senses from Killian’s blank face and tense shoulders that the moment of his departure might be soon. 

When they get home she makes him sit down at the table and have breakfast, bacon and eggs and toast and strong coffee. He obediently eats it all, but his mind is clearly not on the food. 

“I’ve finished the boat,” he says. “She’s ready to sail.” 

“That’s great!” 

“Yeah. I was thinking I might go.” 

“Go where?”

He shrugs. “Just go. I’ve got enough money saved to last a while, if I keep things simple. I might just sail. No destination. See where the sea takes me,” he jokes with a faint smile. 

Belle nods. She’ll miss him but she knows he needs this. He needs something to help him see what he’s worth, and Storybrooke will never provide it.

Killian continues, his voice strained. “I just can’t bear to see Emma... to see her... I want her to be happy,” he says fiercely. “She deserves that. She deserves someone like Graham who has so much to offer her, and who her family likes. I just— I can’t watch it. I can accept that she doesn’t feel as I do. But I can’t watch her fall in love with someone else. I have to go.”

“I agree,” says Belle. 

“You do?”

“Yes. Storybrooke is my place, but I’ve always known it’s not yours. You’re always welcome here of course, but you have to go and discover what more the world holds for you. You have to find out who you are, Killian, because this…” she gestures at his wrinkled clothes and hunched shoulders, “…this isn’t it. You’re _so_ much better than this.”

He snorts. “I’m really not.”

“You are. I’ve always believed that. Now go find a way to believe it yourself.”

\--

Killian leaves at sunrise the next morning. He doesn’t say goodbye. It’s Belle who tells Emma he’s gone, watches as her face goes deathly pale and tears slowly fill her eyes until they overflow and pour in rivulets down her ashen cheeks. She doesn’t make a sound.

Finally she whispers, “He left?”

Belle nods.

Emma’s voice drops until it’s nearly inaudible. “Is he coming back?”

Belle answers truthfully. “I don’t know.”

Tears cascade down Emma’s face and drip off her chin, leaving splotches on her blouse. She doesn’t notice. “How,” she whispers. “How could he… _why_…”

Belle is torn. Killian’s feelings aren’t for her to share, but it’s so obvious his leaving has broken Emma’s heart and Belle’s heart breaks for her. She has to give Emma something.

“Killian… he has some things to sort out,” she says. “A lot of anger. Unhealed scars from his childhood.”

“His brother,” says Emma automatically. Belle is surprised, she had no idea Killian told Emma about Liam.

“Yes,” she says. “And his parents.” Emma nods in understanding; so she knows that story too. “He just—” Belle thinks of how to say what Emma needs to hear without _saying_ it. “He doesn’t have anything to offer another person right now.”

“He does,” says Emma fiercely. “He just doesn’t believe it.”

Belle studies the younger woman closely as realisation begins to dawn, wondering how Killian could possibly be so blind. She’s always known Emma cares for her nephew more than he is able to see, but this— this is a love as deep as Killian’s own. She tries to think of something to say, some comforting platitude to give, when Emma speaks again and floors her. “He wants to get away from _her,_ doesn’t he?” She spits the pronoun with so much venom Belle is alarmed by the shift in her mood.

“Who?” she asks.

“The woman he _loves_.” 

“He told you he’s in love with someone?” Killian, it seems, has revealed rather a lot of very personal things to this woman he claims could never be interested in him.

“Yeah.” Emma’s face crumples and she finally sobs. “He did. Do you know who it is?” 

Belle can’t lie, not about this. “Yes,” she says. “But it’s not—”

“Not your secret to tell. I get it. But is she the reason why he…”

“Yes,” Belle replies. “To a large extent she is.”

Emma nods, sobbing harder, and her nose begins to drip. She sniffs and looks around for something to wipe it, and gratefully accepts the handkerchief Belle hands her. She dries her tears —for all the good it does as they don’t stop falling— and blows her nose then looks helplessly at the sodden mess of cloth in her hand.

“Keep it,” says Belle. “It’s one of Killian’s.” She doesn’t miss the way Emma’s fingers tighten on the small scrap of fabric.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and presses the handkerchief against her heart.

_Killian, my lad, you’ve fucked things up something proper,_ thinks Belle.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So let me start by saying how much I hate @thisonesatellite. I mean obviously I don't hate her, I love her even though she has been HOGGING THE BRAIN, but I hate that EVERY TIME she says I’m going to need more chapters to tell my story I DO. I DO NEED THEM. Curse her. 
> 
> The upside of her eerie genius is that there are now three chapters in this fic. ONLY THREE, DAMMIT. 
> 
> I’d like to say that this one is less angsty than the first but that would be a LIE.

Killian doesn’t write and he doesn’t call. He doesn’t contact anyone except Belle, and she gets nothing but the odd text message sent at irregular intervals. She never tells anyone what the messages say and Emma can’t bear to ask. 

She googles him, though, in moments of weakness— when Graham pushes a bit too hard or when her parents smile at him too fondly, when Emma’s had a drink or two too many she gives in to the longing that is never not a part of her and searches for any scrap of information about him that she can find. 

Her searches come up empty, at first. She expects little else —he’s off on a boat after all— but then one day about a year after he left she searches for his name and finds an Instagram account. She holds her breath as she clicks on it, wondering if after so long it could possibly, actually be him. All the pictures are of landscapes and cityscapes and food and people— so many people, and though none of them are him she knows instinctively that this account is his. These are photographs he’s taken of his travels. 

She makes a second account for herself with a meaningless username and follows him. She checks his page daily, marking off all the places he visits on a globe she buys expressly for the purpose, charting his progress as he travels around the world. His photographs are gorgeous, full of colour and life, and they capture the spirit and the essence of each location. He’s a fantastic photographer, and it turns out an even better writer. 

One day when she checks his Instagram she sees a link to a blog. With shaking hands she clicks on it and finds a single post—a story, complete with pictures, of a day he spent in Vietnam. It was a hot day, he recounted, edging towards 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit, Emma learns from Google, and her jaw drops) and Killian spent it in a place called Hoi An, visiting an elderly couple who breed silkworms for the local trade and taking photographs in their un-air-conditioned house. By the late afternoon he was bathed in sweat, thirsty and grumpy and wanting nothing more than to get back to his boat and have a beer, sail out to sea to catch a cool breeze. When he returned to where he’d moored her, however, he discovered that some local children had cut his line and set his boat adrift off the coast. The children thought this was a hilarious joke, and Killian, despite his mood and the sweat pouring off him, found himself laughing along with them. With no other practical options available, he put his camera bag on his head, secured the strap under his chin, and carefully swam out to his boat. The water was warm, he wrote, like a tepid bath, bright blue and gentle, and it washed the sweat away and refreshed him. When he reached the boat he tossed the camera bag aboard along with the wet clothes he simply stripped off and then floated in the water, watching a thunderstorm roll in over the mountains behind the town. 

Emma devours the story eagerly, then goes back to the beginning and reads it again. His writing style is eloquent and engaging, his descriptions of the locations and people vivid and funny, and she feels like she’s there with him. She feels a pang at that realisation. If _only_ she were there with him. 

The story ends with a final photograph, clearly taken from the deck of his boat. A stormy grey sky lit up by a flash of lighting arcing down over the tops of lush green mountains. The brown roofs of houses dotted around the lower elevations and down to the white sandy beach fronted by clear azure water. The caption reads: _I had never known such contentment or such peace._

That he had to go to the other side of the world to find those things breaks her heart. 

She checks his blog daily and he updates it often, and soon she is only one of his regular readers. He gets dozens, then hundreds of comments on each post and he replies to them with charm and humour, and before too long advertisers begin to take notice. As do editors. 

His first professional article appears in _Wanderlust_ about two and a half years after his departure from Storybrooke. More soon follow, and his blog is updated with less and less frequency. And then, four years after he left, he makes the cover of _National Geographic_. 

Emma cries as she reads it, huge, silent tears that leave tracks down her face, and with her fingertip she traces the small picture of him next to the article. His beard is thicker, she thinks, though he still hasn’t learned how to use a comb. 

Six months later he announces that he’s shutting down his blog because he’s written a book, a novel that will be published the following year. Emma is _thrilled_, and so proud of him. He always was good with words, as his impressive career in travel journalism proves, and she’s delighted he’s found an even more creative way to use that talent. But then she thinks about how, once, he would have given her this news himself, and her tears fall again. 

She thinks about how things were between them, so long ago now. How from the very beginning he fascinated her, that sullen, beautiful boy with his soft accent and his furious pain, the wary disbelief in his eyes when she brought him a blanket and the shock of intense connection when she shook his hand. Her persistent campaign to break through the bastion of his anger and discover the person beneath, her joy when she succeeded. The long, hot days of his first summer in Storybrooke, walking in the woods or sitting by the docks together, reading, listening to music, talking about everything. How in love with him she was and how she thought, in odd moments and snatches of glances that he might feel the same. 

Then autumn came and Killian turned eighteen. The morning of his birthday he dropped out of school, telling Emma without looking at her that with the chaos of his parents’ deaths and the struggle to find someone to take custody of him he missed his exams in England and here in the US everything was too different. He wouldn’t be able to graduate in the spring and he didn’t see the point of staying in school when he should be earning money. Now that there were no more funds from the state to support him, he said, he couldn’t be a burden on Belle. 

He got a job at the docks, working such long hours she barely ever saw him. When she did he was exhausted, worn in a way that worried her, though he always had a smile for her and a new book he discovered for her to read. His mind was so active, so curious, but when she tried to talk him into going back to school he refused to listen, withdrawing into himself if she even brought it up. 

Emma thinks about how he began to pull away from her, subtly at first, allowing the circumstances of their lives to do most of the work. She thinks of the gossip she began to hear about him, stories of sleeping with older women who would buy him alcohol, drinking until he passed out. She confronted him about it and he stonewalled her, telling her to go back to her high school boys and leave him in peace. 

_Man whore,_ she hissed at him. 

_Princess,_ he snarled back, turning the word into an insult. 

Emma cried herself to sleep that night, and the next day agreed to go to her senior prom with Neal Cassidy. 

\--

When word of Killian’s book gets out Storybrooke goes _insane_. Everyone seems to have forgotten the way they once treated him, the suspicion and distrust, the whispering behind his back, always waiting for him to explode in violence or do something that would get him locked up for good. All they remember now is that he’s a ‘local boy’—one born on a different continent, but that is also forgotten— and there is pride in their voices when they speak of him. There is speculation on when he’s going to ‘come home.’ 

Emma wants nothing more than for him to come home, but not like this, not into the clutches of these vultures, she thinks viciously, these people who made him feel like less than nothing and who now just want to trade on his acclaim. Yet she wants so badly to see him, to hear his voice again. He’s been gone five years and the wound is still open, still gaping and raw. By now she knows it will never heal, and if she lives to be a hundred she will never stop missing him. 

Graham knows it too. They’re still dating, sort of, in the sense that they go out together sometimes and they sleep together sometimes but Emma has never been able to fully commit to the relationship. She loves Graham but she’s not _in love_ with him, as the cliché goes, and when Killian becomes the focus of eager conversation throughout the town Graham thinks he may finally know the reason why. 

“It’s Killian, isn’t it?” he asks her out of nowhere one day. They’re in the sheriff’s station where Emma now works alongside him, having graduated with her criminal justice degree and joined the force as a deputy. “You’re in love with him.” 

“What? How do you know?” She stares at him, too astonished to dissemble. 

“Emma, you should see your face whenever anyone mentions his name.” Graham smiles sadly. “I didn’t notice at first because— well, no one talked about him, but now his name’s getting thrown around all over the place and every time you hear it you look like your heart is breaking.” 

“Graham.” She has no idea what to say to him. 

“At least now I know why you couldn’t ever fall for me.”

“I’m so sorry.” Emma feels terrible. “I probably shouldn’t have— It’s just my dad was so—” 

“I know. _I_ probably shouldn’t have pushed so hard. With hindsight it’s always been pretty obvious your heart wasn’t in it.” 

“I wish it could have been,” she says with a flare of anger. “Killian never wanted me, he left without even saying goodbye. I haven’t heard a word from him in five years, so _why_ can’t I stop loving him?”

“What is it they say? True love never dies?” 

“I’ll have to find a way to kill it then, because I can’t live the rest of my life like this.” 

Graham stares at his hands. He thinks about Killian, the first friend he made in Storybrooke and one whose company he still misses. He thinks about how things were back then, and examines his memories through a different lens. He thinks for several minutes and then he speaks. “You might not have to.” 

"Have to what?" He's been silent for so long Emma has lost track of their conversation. 

"Have to live the rest of your life like this." 

She scowls. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I don’t think— I don’t think Killian didn’t want you.” 

“_What?_” Emma glares at him but he doesn’t look up. 

“It’s not something we ever spoke of, but looking back.. hindsight and all, I see some things now that I didn’t want to see back then. He was always so tense when you were around, and his face when anyone said your name— well, it was a lot like yours is now when someone says his.”

She shakes her head. “You’re imagining things, Graham. Projecting—” 

“No, I don’t think I am,” he interrupts firmly, finally looking at her. “I think Killian loved you but thought— he must have thought he couldn’t give you what you needed and that’s why he left.” 

“And what exactly did he think I _needed?_” Emma's face is angry but her eyes are devastated, and Graham's heart aches for her. 

“Maybe you should ask him that,” he says gently. 

Emma throws up her hands. “I just told you he hasn’t spoken to me in half a decade. I’ve got no idea where he even is.” 

“You’re a cop,” says Graham. “You have resources.” 

“Graham Humbert, are you suggesting I misappropriate—” 

“I’m not suggesting anything, Emma, other than that it seems you and Killian have a conversation that’s at least five years overdue, and maybe it’s time you finally had it.”

\--

Two weeks later Killian’s book comes out. It’s an instant sensation, shooting to the top of the bestseller lists. All his Instagram followers and blog readers and travel magazine subscribers buy it and so do their friends and family. Emma buys a copy and stares for a long time at his name on the cover before she begins to read. 

The book is not a love story. It’s a story of love frustrated by life. It’s the story of a boy and a girl, the classic star-crossed lovers, who end up not dying in each other’s arms or living happily ever after but just… living. Ever after. 

It’s the story of bad timing and bad choices and circumstances that grind away at love until nothing remains but the ghost of it, and of two people who would once have done anything for each other but by the end barely speak. It’s beautifully written and it’s heartbreaking, and for Emma it hits her straight in her soul. Because _she_ is the girl, and Killian is the boy, and she doesn’t even have to read the interview he gives to the _New York Times Book Review_, confessing that the woman he wrote about is based on a real person, to know that this is them. This is how Killian imagined the path their lives would take, if they got together all those years ago. This is why he left. 

\--

Emma takes the book with her everywhere, rereading it in every spare moment, searching for something to convince her she’s wrong, that she’s imagining what isn’t there. She forgets to eat and barely sleeps, and finally she goes to see Belle, knocking on her door with the book clutched tightly to her chest. Belle hugs her, the minute she opens it. She’s read the book too. 

“He’s never coming back, is he?” Emma whispers. 

Belle shakes her head. “No.” 

She ushers Emma inside, sits her down on the sofa. Waits. 

Emma stares at the book, ruffling its pages and toying with its dust jacket. “Isn’t there anything that might make him— any reason he might want to— to come to Storybrooke again? Doesn’t he at least want to see you?”

Belle chooses her words carefully. “I visited him last Christmas,” she says gently. “In his new place, at his request. He doesn’t want to come back here. I— believe there are some things he thinks would hurt too much to revisit.” 

“The woman in his book.” 

“Yes.” 

Emma takes a deep breath, looks Belle straight in the eye. “Is it me?” She holds up the book. “Is _she_— me?”

Belle sighs, but there’s no point in lying. The woman in the book is so obviously Emma. She’s kept Killian’s secret as long as she could, but if he’s going to put his heart on display in the pages of an international bestseller there’s only so much that she can do to protect it for him. 

“Yes,” she says. “It’s you.” 

“Then he… he loved me?” 

Belle nods, and Emma’s fingers grip the book tightly. “Did he leave town because of me?”

“He did. He loved you deeply, Emma, but he never acted on it because he believed you didn’t feel the same, and even if you did he couldn’t give you the life you deserved. Then you started dating Graham and couldn’t bear to watch you fall in love with someone else.” 

“He’s such an _idiot_,” hisses Emma, and Belle does rather agree. Yet she’s not sorry Killian left Storybrooke; he’d never have made anything of himself had he stayed. He’s got the life _he_ deserves now, and he’s stable, if not quite happy. He’s been seeing a therapist and working through the scars from his past. For the first time in all the years she’s known him anger isn’t his defining feature, and while she does think his book takes rather too pessimistic a view of the life they might have had together, she’s certain none of the progress he’s made would have been possible if he’d remained here in this town with Emma, however much he loved her. 

“Tell me something, Emma,” she says. “If Killian had told you he loved you before he left, what would you have done?” 

“Gone with him,” says Emma, without a second’s hesitation. 

Belle gives her a hard look. “You would have given up everything —your education, your family, your home— to live with him on a boat, scraping by on his savings?” 

“Yes.” Emma thinks about the picture from his first blog post, the calm and contentment he’d found floating off the coast of Vietnam. She would have given up anything to experience that with him. Just to be with him. “All I’ve ever really wanted is to have a life with him. The details of that life don’t really matter. I mean, they _do_, but— we could have worked them out together.”

Belle smiles and gives her head a little shake. One of these days, she thinks, she’ll stop underestimating Emma Swan. “He’s living in New York now,” she says casually. “In a neighbourhood called the Bowery. Bought himself a nice little flat there. Apparently the advance on his next book was a generous one.” 

Emma swallows hard before she speaks. “Is he planning to stay there?” she asks. 

“I think so,” says Belle. “I think he’s ready to stop wandering and find his place.” 

\--

Emma has been with the sheriff’s department for three years and she’s never once abused the power that comes with her position. She doesn’t speed or park where she shouldn’t, or cut in line at Granny’s as even Graham has been known to do. She’s never so much as jaywalked. But when she learns where Killian lives, his very neighbourhood in fact, she busts out every cop trick she knows to find his address. 

When she has it she sits for a long time, thinking. Then she opens Google Street View. She feels a bit like a stalker, looking online at the very building where he lives, but she can’t help herself. And if she goes through with her plan then she will quite literally be stalking him and via not-quite-legal means as well. 

But she can’t get Graham’s words out of her head. _A conversation at least five years overdue_. She wants to know why he left, why he pushed her away even before that, why he didn’t trust her to love him enough to make everything else irrelevant. She needs to hear it from his own mouth, not from Graham’s or Belle’s or anyone else’s. She needs to _know._

She doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going or what she intends to do. Her dad is surprised when she asks for two weeks off work— she’s not had so much as a sick day since she started— but when he and her mother ask about her plans she tells them she just needs some time away after her breakup with Graham. Her father’s mouth goes grim; he’s not happy about that breakup. But he says nothing and her mother hugs her and tells her to take all the time she needs. 

\--

The next day finds her at Killian’s door, trying to calm her racing heartbeat as she stares at the number on it, gathers her courage, and rings the bell. When he appears her breath stops. Her _world_ stops. He looks good, is all she can think. Older, of course, filled out and more solid, with thick scruff along his jaw and his hair neatly trimmed if less than neatly combed. He’s always been good looking, but in the past the anger and defiance that so often marred his features made it hard to see. But now… now the anger is nowhere to be found and he is _beautiful_, his smile shining as brilliantly as she remembers until he recognises her and it fades away. 

“Swan,” he gasps, staring at her with wide eyes. “What— why are you—” 

“I read your book,” she says breathlessly. 

“Ah.” 

“I loved it. You’re an incredible writer.” 

He drops his eyes and rubs his neck, a pink flush spreading over his cheekbones. Some things haven’t changed, she thinks. He never could handle praise.

“Erm, well, yes. Thank you,” he says. “Um. Come in, Swan.” 

He steps back to allow her entrance and she feels breathless again as she takes in his apartment. It’s plainly furnished but everywhere there are _things_, all manner of them, clearly souvenirs of his travels. Sculptures and paintings and knickknacks and other little touches of the life he’s lived without her. She spins slowly around, wide-eyed. 

“This is amazing.” 

“Aye, well, I’ve done some travelling.” 

“I know. I read your blog too, and your Instagram.” 

“You— really?” 

She turns to look at him. “Yeah. I’ve been following you for a while. On the internet at least.” 

“That’s— well, I don’t really know. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think you—” _I didn’t think you cared_. She hears the words he doesn’t say. 

The urge to touch him is so strong she digs her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from reaching out, wrapping him in her arms and never letting go. She notices that he seems to be doing the same, one hand stuffed deep in his pocket and the other a tight fist at his side. The tension Graham spoke of is there as well. It radiates from him, belying his casual posture. He was always tense around her in those later years, she remembers. Now she has some new ideas about why. 

She doesn’t know what to say, though, how to start the conversation she needs them to have. 

He starts it for her. “Why are you here, Swan?” he asks. 

“Belle told me where you live.” 

“That’s a how, not a why,” he says, with a small smile. 

“I just wanted to see you.” 

“Why?”

She tries to sort through all the reasons: because she still loves him and always will, because she missed him every second he was gone and she’s so angry at him for leaving without even a goodbye but also she’s proud of him for what he’s accomplished, for pulling himself out of the life he hated and finding success through his talent and hard work and sheer stubbornness. She tries to sort through the chaos of her thoughts but before she can the door opens and a woman rushes in. 

“Sorry I’m late, I— oh. I didn’t know you were expecting any visitors.” 

“I wasn’t.” Killian smiles at the woman as she approaches them. She’s tall and elegant with dark hair that tumbles in wild curls down her back. Emma feels small and dowdy next to her, and when she kisses Killian in greeting Emma can’t suppress a flinch. 

“This is Emma,” says Killian. “A friend from Storybrooke.” 

The woman looks at her with sharp interest. “I thought you didn’t have any friends there.” 

“I believe I said I didn’t have _many_,” Killian replies with a grin. “She’s one.” He turns back to Emma and the smile slips away. “This is Milah, my agent,” he tells her. “And, ah, my girlfriend.” 

Emma doesn’t flinch this time. She’s frozen by the stab of pain through her heart, though she knew this was coming from the moment the woman came through his door. Of course he has a girlfriend, she thinks, he’s moved on with his life. He’s _been_ moving on, for the past five years. She’s the one who can’t let go. 

She feels like she’s watching herself from outside her body as she summons a smile from God knows where and shakes Milah’s hand. She says all the right things— _nice to meet you_ and _yes, here on vacation_ and _just in the neighbourhood, thought I’d look him up_. From the expression in Milah’s pale eyes she doesn’t believe a word of it. 

“Well, I’m sorry to cut your reunion short, Emma, but I’m afraid Killian has an appointment and we’re already running late,” she says briskly. 

“Yes, of course,” Emma, replies, leaping to her feet and grabbing her things. “I’ll just… it was nice to meet you Milah, and to see you Killian. I’ll, uh, find my way out.” She forces herself not to run. 

Killian catches up to her as she’s waiting at the elevator. “Swan!” he calls, and Emma wills the elevator to come faster, wishes she’d just taken the stairs. She tries not to turn around, but he calls her name again she can’t resist the entreaty in his voice. 

“Where are you staying?” he asks, all in a rush. “For how long? Can I— can we—” he takes a deep breath and tries again. “I’d love to see you before you go. If you like, that is. Can I take you for coffee or something?” 

The elevator doors open and she steps inside, turns to look at him almost against her will.

“Swan,” he says again, and his voice is so soft. 

She gives him the name of her hotel, forces herself not to be thrilled by the warmth of his smile. The first smile he’s directed at her in five years. “I’ll come by tomorrow morning,” he says, and she nods as the doors slide shut. It’s just a platitude, she tells herself, just something people say. She won’t get her hopes up. 

She _won’t._

\--

Killian returns to his apartment where Milah is waiting, actually tapping her toe on the floor as she stares at her phone with a stony expression. He ignores her mood, grabs his jacket and his satchel and holds open the door. 

“Are you coming?” he asks. 

She sweeps by him without a word and he follows her downstairs to where a town car is waiting. There is no sign of Emma in the street.

They sit in silence as the car navigates the heavy traffic. Killian is lost in his thoughts, unnerved by the way his skin is tingling, his blood pounding hot in his veins. This reaction is insane, he thinks, they didn’t even touch. Just seeing Emma again has shaken him to his core and he can’t work out how he feels about it. He never expected to see her anywhere but in his dreams. 

“That was her, wasn’t it?” says Milah, interrupting his reverie. “The woman from your book.” 

“Aye.” He regrets Emma’s presence in his book, resents it a bit. He tried to write the woman differently but no matter what he did she refused to be anyone but Emma. In the end he gave in, hoping that writing about her might excise her from his heart. It didn’t. Nothing ever could. 

Milah is silent for several streets. When she speaks again her voice is carefully neutral. “Are you going to tell her you’re still in love with her?” she asks. “That you’ve never stopped?”

“Milah—” he begins, but she cuts him off with a short, sharp gesture of her hand.

“It’s okay, Killian. Well, it’s not _okay_, but I’ve always known you didn’t love me the way you love her.” She gives a wry smile. “I just never imagined she’d show up at your door.” 

“No, nor I.” 

“What are you going to do about it?”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know.” 

Milah pauses again, chooses her words carefully. “You know you’ll never be completely happy without her, right?” 

He nods. “I know. But—” He hesitates, and she steps in.

“But you don’t think you deserve to be.” She gives him a probing look. “You do, you know.”

Killian stares at his hands, fighting against the memories that are starting to engulf him, things he hasn’t allowed himself to think about for years. Emma’s laugh, the way she smiled at him, the sunlight in her hair. Her father’s face whenever he saw them together. The way people in Storybrooke used to watch them, resentfully, as though his mere presence in her orbit would despoil their princess. 

He shakes his head.“You don’t understand. Emma, she’s _perfect_—” 

“She’s not,” snorts Milah, and meets his glare with a calm stare of her own. “She’s just a woman. A lovely one, yes, and by your account a remarkable one. But still just a woman. One who loves you.” 

His heart squeezes at that thought, one his brain refuses to entertain. “She doesn’t,” he insists, “she’s just being—” 

“Oh, stop it!” snaps Milah. “Stop making excuses. It’s fucking obvious to anyone with eyes. She’s as bad at hiding her feelings as you are. That woman is crazy in love with you and the only reason you can’t see it is because you think you don’t deserve it.”

“I don’t deserve _her,_” insists Killian, his jaw set stubbornly. 

Milah rolls her eyes, huffs out a breath. “You know what, maybe this is for the best,” she says. “Your moods were driving me crazy anyway.” 

“What, are you breaking up with me?”

“Yes. Yes I am. I can do better than a self-loathing nomad who’s in love with someone else.” 

They glare at each other. “You probably can,” says Killian. 

“Damn straight,” says Milah. 

“You will still be my agent, right?” 

“Of course I will. You’re my fucking cash cow, love.” 

Their glares fade into grins and they laugh. “Maybe it is for the best,” he concedes. “I like you too much to impose myself on you.” 

“Stop that,” says Milah. “That self deprecation gets really bloody tiresome. Just tell Blondie you love her, the rest will sort itself out. And quit holding her up in your mind like some sort of goddess. She’s just a woman.” 

Killian doesn’t reply. 

\--

He calls Belle late that night. She answers after many rings with a sleepy “Hello?” He’s woken her up. He expects he should be sorry for that but he isn’t; he’s too mad at her for telling Emma where to find him. For destroying the peace he’s worked so hard to achieve. 

“Why,” he chokes out. He’s been sitting alone for hours fighting the urge to drink, unable to sleep, thinking about Emma and _remembering_ and trying not to tumble back into feelings he thought he’d escaped. “Why would you tell her where I was?”

“What?” says Belle, and there is genuine confusion in her voice. “Killian? Who did I tell what to?” She must be tired, thinks Killian, if she’s dangling prepositions. 

“Emma,” he snarls. “You told her where I live. Why? Why, when you _know_ how I—” 

“Hold on,” Belle is awake now, and there’s a snap in her tone. “I told Emma you live in New York but I didn’t give her your address. Why? Is she there?” 

“Aye.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “She appeared at my door this afternoon.” 

“Ah.” Belle sounds satisfied. 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

“Killian. Please think about this. She tracked you down. She went to a lot of trouble to find you. Why do you think she would do that?” 

“I’ve no bloody clue.” 

“You do,” says Belle sharply. “You’re just being obtuse. What did she say?” 

“Not much. The timing was complicated.” 

“Well, talk to her. Just talk. See what comes out.” There’s a pause as Belle sighs. “You’ve spent so long thinking you can’t have good things, Killian, I suppose it must be difficult to change that mindset. But you have to. You _can_ have the things you want. You are allowed to be happy.” 

“I—” He doesn’t know what to say. 

“Get some sleep,” Belle tells him. “Talk to Emma in the morning. And keep me informed.” 

“Aye.” 

He hangs up the phone and drops onto his sofa, letting his head fall into his hands. Belle’s words ring in his ears. 

_You are allowed to be happy._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES OKAY I have added a chapter AGAIN. Just a short epilogue, to wrap up the loose ends. Because THIS chapter is the meat of the story, the conversation that’s five years overdue, and it is a DOOZY. (AND because @thisonesatellite said “oh this part would be a great epilogue” and she WAS RIGHT, curse her). I’m just not going to bother with chapter counts anymore. 
> 
> ANYWAY. 
> 
> In this chapter we have a cocoa date and and painful fight, and resolution, for better or worse.

The next morning Killian stands in the lobby of the hotel where Emma’s staying, his hands shoved deep in his pockets because they tremble if he doesn’t restrain them. His heart is pounding so hard it makes his head ache, and his mouth is dry. He succeeded in not drinking the night before but he thinks wryly that it’s made little difference. He might as well be hung over, the state he’s in. 

When she appears his heart actually skips a beat —a thing he’d thought dreamt up by florid romance writers— and he swallows hard, trying to work some damn saliva into his mouth. She’s more beautiful than he remembered, her hair falling in soft waves around her face instead of pulled back in the ponytail she favoured in her teens. He vaguely recalls that in later years she wore it down more often but by then he was so focused on burying his attraction to her that he forced such observations from his mind. That and he was drunk quite often in those days. 

The sunlight catches in her hair setting it aglow, and her smile is tentative. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a soft-looking sweater and he’s glad his hands are in his pockets because they are itching to touch her, to sink into that hair as he holds her close and tight in his arms. As strong as his sexual attraction to her has always been the urge he’s had to fight the hardest over the years is just to hold her. Just to take comfort from her presence. 

“Hi,” she says. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.” 

“I said I would.” 

“I know, but—” she shrugs. “Anyway I’m glad you did.” She seems surprised to hear herself say it. 

“Ah,” he struggles to think of what to say. “There’s a nice little cafe not far from here, do you fancy a cup of coffee? Or something else?”

“How’s their hot chocolate?”

He grins. “I haven’t tried it. Care to take a chance?”

She grins back, and happiness lights her eyes. “Okay.” 

The cafe is small and bright, quirky without being twee. It’s one of his favourites and he’s pleased to find the little table in the window is unoccupied. “I come here to write sometimes,” he tells Emma. “Though I usually get caught up in people-watching, it’s less creepy when you have a laptop in front of you.” She laughs and the light, sweet sound makes him feel like he could fly. 

They both order hot chocolate and he watches Emma take a sip, waits for her verdict. “It’s good,” she says, and takes a bigger one. “Really good, actually. Better than—” she breaks off with a wary glance at him. 

“Better than Granny’s,” he finishes for her. 

“Yeah.” She drops her eyes, fixes them on her drink. 

“It’s okay to mention it,” he tells her. “Good even. I see a therapist every week just for mentioning it. At first it was like pulling teeth but now I look forward to going.” 

Her fingers toy with the handle of her cup. “You talk to your therapist about Granny?” 

“Aye, among other things.”

She cradles the cup in her two hands, her fingers flexing on the warm ceramic. Her eyes dart up to his face as she sips. “You seem— I don’t know, more at peace now,” she says. “Is that why? The therapy?” 

“It’s one reason.” 

“Leaving Storybrooke.” It’s not a question. 

“That’s another.” 

“Do you… do you ever regret leaving?” 

“No.” 

He’s thought a lot about this question in the years since his departure and for hours last night, and no matter what angle he approaches it from the answer is still the same. Missing Emma has been a constant ache, like phantom pains in a severed limb, but as painful as being away from her has been he can’t regret leaving Storybrooke. Getting away from that place saved his life, _made_ his life into something worth living. He’d not even realised how badly it had scarred him until he started meeting people who had no preconceptions of who he was. People who saw things in him worth liking, and liked him for them. He wasted a lot of time at first by holding himself back from those people, waiting for them to discover the _real_ him and despise him for it. He lost several potential friends that way. But gradually he learned to accept that when people sought his company it was because they actually wanted it, and that for him was a goddamned revelation. 

Emma’s eyes drop again at his unequivocal tone, and she gives a small nod. The sadness that chases away her earlier bright smile makes his heart ache and he wishes he could tell her that his leaving wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t, at least not the fault of anything she did, just of who she was and who he was and how he felt about her and the impossibility of feeling as he did while being who he was. But he doesn’t quite know how to express all the nuances of this. Of everything that went into his decision to leave. 

“Emma,” he says, and she flinches slightly. “You stopped calling me that, remember,” she whispers. “The last few years it was always ‘Swan.’” 

“I—” 

“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupts. She tilts her cup back, finishing the last of the chocolate. “Can we walk a bit?”

—

They stroll through the streets and he points out the places he likes to go, recommends some things she might enjoy doing in the area. He still doesn’t know how long she plans to stay. She is clearly interested, asks questions and takes some pictures on her phone, but when the conversation lags he feels her silence like a physical presence between them. He doesn’t know what to do to break through it. 

They arrive at the corner of his street and he can see she recognises it. She glances at him and he gives her a hopeful smile. He isn’t ready for their time together to end, and he thinks she isn’t either. 

“Do you want to come up?” he asks, nodding at his building. “Maybe sit down for a while?” They’ve been walking for the best part of an hour. 

She nods. “I’d like that. And also—” She hesitates, looking uncertain.

“Also what?” he encourages. 

“Would you tell me about the things in your apartment? The ones you collected while you were travelling? I read all the stories you put on your blog but I’d love to see the things that go along with them. If that’s okay?” 

“Of course it is.” He’s utterly thrilled that she’s interested, that she actually read the things he wrote. The thought of having her in his apartment, though, being alone with her there, telling her stories of his travels and having her listen with real interest— it sends excitement and apprehension coiling around his insides, squeezing them painfully. His heart is racing again and he really, _really_ wants a drink. 

They are silent in the elevator, leaning against opposite corners, and when they enter his apartment they stand staring at each other in awkward silence. 

“Um.” Killian feels desperate to break it. “Do you— want anything to drink? Water, coffee, tea?” 

“Rum?” she jokes. 

“Alas, no,” he says with a small smile, just a slight curve of one corner of his mouth. 

“_You _don’t have any rum?” The joking is gone and she is genuinely surprised. 

He rubs at a spot behind his right ear. “I stopped drinking,” he says, and her eyes widen. 

“What, completely?” 

He shrugs. “I have some beer, a few bottles of wine. But I don’t drink liquor anymore.” 

“Oh.” She feels as though that’s a positive development, but congratulating him seems wrong, too glib somehow and not her place. 

He sees her discomfited expression and his smile softens. “Therapy again,” he explains. “Apparently I use alcohol as an emotional crutch, and that’s not a healthy way to be.” He tries to keep his voice light. He does _not_ want to answer any questions about this. Not now. 

She nods, smiles. “I’m not really thirsty.” 

He swallows back a surge of emotion. She’s always understood him far too well. 

He gives her a mini-tour of his apartment, shows her all the souvenirs he’s collected and tells the stories behind them. She laughs at his jokes and asks insightful questions, and for a time the years fall away and they feel as close as they were in that long-ago summer before the fragile ties that bound them fell apart. 

When she’s seen everything he offers her coffee again and this time she accepts. Emma watches him as he moves confidently around his kitchen, manipulating the complicated espresso machine with an ease she envies. He’s changed so much from when she last saw him, she thinks, but the changes have made him more like how he was when they first met, eager and interested under all his anger and just brimming with intelligence. The defeatist, bitterly resentful young man who left Storybrooke with no goodbyes was never who he really was. 

He hands her a cup and they sit down, and silence falls again. Emma knows what needs to be said, what she came here to say. It lurks invisibly in the space between them, poised to destroy the delicate balance they’ve held all morning. She doesn’t want to say it but she knows she must. 

“We need to talk,” she says. 

He attempts a smile. “I find that when a woman says that I’m rarely in for a pleasant conversation.” 

“Please don’t joke,” she implores. “This is hard for me.” 

“I know, love,” he says gently, and she winces again. _Love._ It’s another name he hasn’t called her in many years. She needs to know just how much he means it. 

“The woman in your book,” she says, watching him carefully. He catches his breath. “She’s me, isn’t she?” 

“Aye.” 

“And on my birthday, when you said you were _in love_ you meant with me.” 

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Aye.” His voice is hoarse, he has to push the words past the tight ache in his chest. “It’s only ever been you, for me.” 

This should make her happy, it’s what she’s longed for years to hear. Instead she is frustrated, _furious_ with him. “But why didn’t you ever _tell_ me?” she bursts out, grinding her clenched fist against her leg. 

“How could I?” he snaps. “Who was I to say those words to you?” He sets down his coffee cup, drags a hand through his hair. “You have to understand, Emma, loving you... it was like trying to draw down the sun. You were so bright and beautiful it hurt to look at you and so far above my reach there was no point in reaching.” 

“I wasn’t above you!” she chokes. 

Killian’s face twists into a sneer she recognises all too well. “Tell that to your father,” he snarls. “Tell it to everyone in that bloody town.”

“But...” Emma gropes for the words she needs, cursing herself. She’s never been good at talking about her feelings, and especially not when she’s so caught up in feeling them. “It didn’t matter what they thought—” 

“It _did_,” he retorts. “It’s all well and good to say that other people’s opinions don’t matter, but that’s a very privileged position to take. It _did_ matter what people in Storybrooke thought of me because it informed how they treated me, and how they treated me informed every aspect of my life there.”

“_Every_ aspect!” she sputters. 

“Yes, every one! What kind of job I could get, where I could live, what establishments I was welcome to patronise. Who I could spend my time with.” His voice cracks. 

“You mean me.” Her own voice is flat. 

“Aye.” He breathes deeply, finds his calm. “Small towns like that, they like people to fit into tidy little slots,” he says. “The schoolteacher, the banker, the librarian, the troublemaker.” 

“That’s ridicul—” 

“The sheriff’s daughter,” he presses on. “The _princess_.” 

Emma recoils. “You called me that once before.” 

“Well can you deny it’s true? Your parents are the most respected people in town and you are their golden child. You’re as hemmed in to your assigned role as I was, darling, your role is just nicer and more comfortable so you’re content to inhabit it.” 

“That’s not true,” she whispers. 

“Isn’t it?” He leans back, gives her a hard look. “Tell me, love, what’s your job?” 

“I’m a deputy.” 

“Mmm,” he says. “Your father must be very proud. Just what he always wanted for you.” 

She glares at him. “It’s what I want too.” 

“Oh? And yet I seem to remember you talking about doing social work, advocating for women and girls.” 

“I changed my mind.” 

“Or your father changed it for you.” 

“Is it so wrong to want my dad to be proud of me?”

“Are you saying he wouldn’t be proud of you if you hadn’t become a cop? Because if his pride in you is that bloody fragile then it sure as fuck wouldn’t have withstood—” he breaks off, picks up his coffee and takes a deep drink.

“What?”

“It’s not important.” 

“Well it obviously is. Tell me.” 

He sets the cup down, looks her straight in the eye. “It wouldn’t have withstood you getting involved with me.” 

She stares at him. “That summer—” 

“That summer,” he echoes, dropping his eyes as a sad smile curves his lips. “I’ve never been happier than I was then, not before or since, but I always knew that one summer was all we’d ever have. There was never any chance of a future for us. Even without all the other factors your father—” He swallows hard and a muscle begins to dance in his jaw. “The way he looked at me every time he saw us together, it was like he thought I was… despoiling you just by being near you. I was not what he wanted for his little girl. His princess.” 

“And what about what I wanted?” she whispers. “You never even asked me.”

“Because I already knew,” he says gently. “You wanted to make your father proud. You said so yourself, many times. It’s why you became his deputy. And of course Graham.”

She breathes through a stab of guilt. “What about Graham?”

“How long did you date him?” His voice is harsh again, roughened by this unhealed wound. 

“From the time you left until about two weeks ago.” 

He gives a sharp laugh that cuts to her core. “Just as daddy wanted.”

“Yeah, well _you_ left,” she snaps back. 

“And if I had stayed, would that have made any difference at all?” 

“No,” Emma acknowledges. “It probably wouldn’t.” _Though only because you were shutting me out_, she wants to add, but temper is sparking in Killian’s eyes again and he speaks before she can gather her words.

“So let me just be sure I understand,” he says, in a sneering tone that makes her want to slap him, “What you’re saying is I should have stayed in a town I hated full of people who hated me and lived a life that had no future while watching the woman I loved date the only friend I had?” 

She sputters in frustration. “Well it sounds terrible when you put it like that!” 

“How else should I put it? Are these not the facts?” 

“Yes they are, minus one crucial one!” 

“Oh, and what’s that?” 

“That I loved _you!_” She is too caught up in her frustration to notice the way his mouth drops open. “That I only said yes to Graham because you wouldn’t give me the time of day! I could have stood up to my father, Killian, I _would_ have if you had shown me even one reason why I should. But you rejected me again and again and I thought why the fuck shouldn’t I be with someone who actually wants me? Why shouldn’t I make my dad happy if I can’t be happy myself?” 

“Emma—”

“And then you left!” she shouts. She’s on a roll now, the words finally flowing, and she doesn’t see the agony on his face. “And you didn’t even have the fucking balls to come to me and tell me so yourself! To say goodbye! I had to hear about it from Belle and I broke down in front of her and cried like a child but I couldn’t help it!” 

“Emma—” 

“I had tears and snot just dripping everywhere and she gave me a handkerchief to wipe my face. One of your handkerchiefs. And you know what, Killian?” 

“What?” he whispers. 

“I still have it.” She reaches into her jeans pocket, pulls out a small square of fabric. “I kept it. I carried it with me every day for five years, even when I couldn’t stand to think about you I had it. But you can have it back now.” She thrusts the handkerchief at him. “Go on, take it, I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want you.” 

He stares at the handkerchief but makes no move to take it. 

“Is your love so fleeting then,” he says. 

“What?” 

“You say you loved me, which is a _hell_ of a thing to spring on a man out of nowhere, Swan, and then you tell me you carried my handkerchief with you for five years which seems to suggest that those feelings didn’t die when I left. But now the first time we have a proper fight you’re ready to give it back and be done with me?”

“Oh, I still love you,” she says in a voice like a dagger. “I’m just tired of waiting for you. Tired of waiting for you to come home.” 

“Home,” he repeats, and there’s a bitter edge to the word. “And where would that be, precisely? Storybrooke was never my home.” 

“I see that now,” she concedes. “But _I_ could have been! We could have made a life together—” 

“In Storybrooke, though?”

“In any place you wanted! I wish you had just told me you wanted to leave, I would have gone with you, anywhere you needed to go. To another town where no one knew us or— or on your boat around the world.” 

He is silent for a moment, collecting his thoughts before he replies. There is a truth he’s come to accept, one doesn’t want to admit to her and that she will certainly not enjoy hearing. A truth that’s tangled up with so much else he’s learned about himself these past five years. He squeezes his eyes shut as he tells it. “I don’t think I would have wanted you to come on the boat.” 

She turns pale. “But— I thought—” 

“In some ways that would have been my dream come true,” he says, and the look in his eyes implores her to understand. “You and me on a boat exploring the world together. The first few years after I left I missed you constantly, and I often thought about what you would have said or done if you’d been there with me. But it wasn’t always fun, Emma, or safe. I got caught in storms and there were times I had to live on fish for days because there was no other food. If you’d been there I’d have felt guilty for taking you away from your family and your future to scrape by with me. And I wouldn’t have taken so many risks, or gone to certain places, because I wouldn’t have wanted to put you in danger. I’d have felt just like I did in Storybrooke, not enough for you, never good enough. And honestly—” She is staring at him with wide, devastated eyes, and he takes a deep breath before continuing. “Honestly, I really needed to be on my own, to discover for myself what I was capable of out from under the weight of all that expectation of failure.”

Emma swallows around the tears gathering in her throat. She wants to say something but has no idea what words he needs. 

“I get that this is difficult for you to understand, Emma,” he continues. “You’ve always been surrounded by people who loved and supported you and who expected the best from you. But I didn’t have a loving family as you did, not with my mum and Liam gone. All I had was Belle, and though I knew she cared about me I always felt like that affection was conditional, and could be withdrawn at any moment.” 

“Belle would never— she loves you!” 

“Yes, of course I know that, but she also doesn’t owe me anything. We’re barely even related, she only took me in because she’s too kind to let harm come to anyone if it’s in her power to prevent it. But I was a burden on her—” 

“You couldn’t be—” 

“I _was_. She never said anything but I knew the money she got for me wasn’t enough. We barely scraped by on it and then I turned eighteen and it was gone. So I got a job to make up the shortfall, and people shook their heads and clucked their tongues and said of course I’d ended up a high school dropout, they’d expected no better of me.” 

“People said that?” she whispers.

His shoulders are tense, his mouth a grim line. “That and a good deal more,” he says tightly. “And every dirty look, every deliberately-too-loud remark, each one just reinforced the guilt I already carried about about Belle and about you. How I felt about you, and what I wanted—” He breaks off, brushes his fingers over his eyes. “And I couldn’t see any way out for me. There were no other jobs I could do, and no place I could go that would be any better. I’d still have no qualifications and no skills and also no impossibly kind distant cousin who would let me live with her rent-free. So I closed myself off and tried to ignore it, lost myself in books whenever I could and the rest of the time buried my feelings in alcohol and sex, which of course just gave people more reason to despise me and thus the cycle continued. The only way I could break it was to remove myself from it. From all of it.” 

“From me.” 

“Yes. And so I bought my boat and I saved what money I could, and then…” He gestures with his hand and she nods.

“And then you left.” 

“Aye.” 

Emma is still clutching his handkerchief, twisting it in her fingers. Seeking comfort from the bit of fabric is second nature to her now. “I had no idea,” she says. “I knew you were angry about your parents and Liam, and that you weren't exactly welcomed with open arms in Storybrooke. I heard some of the things that they whispered about you. But I didn’t realise just how vicious the whispers got and how badly they hurt you, or that you felt so guilty about Belle. Or about me. I’m so sorry, Killian.” 

He attempts a careless shrug but she feels the pain behind his eyes like it’s her own. “Don’t be,” he says. “I didn’t want you to know.” 

“You didn’t think you could confide in me.” 

“I didn’t want to burden you! I hate telling you this now; I don’t want to change the way you see your home and the people in it.” He runs a hand over his face. “But you wanted to know why I left Storybrooke, and this is why.” _This is most of why._

Emma shakes her head, struggles to sort through the complicated mess of what she’s feeling. Sorrow and anger and frustration and turmoil and _love_. So much love, but the anger is twined so tightly around it that she can't separate the two. “I understand how awful that must have been for you,” she says slowly. “Truly I do. But you pulled away from me and shut me out way before then.” She grits her teeth, remembering the hurt and confusion of her younger self, and her anger begins to simmer. “As soon as the summer ended I felt you getting distant. And you didn’t even bother to talk to me about it, about anything, even when I practically _begged_ you to! You just _decided_ I was too good for you, all by yourself, and it never once occurred to you to ask me how _I_ felt about it!” 

“What was there to say? You were too good for me, objectively so—” 

“Oh _hell_ no, there was nothing objective about it!” Fury is roaring through her now, igniting in the green of her eyes and staining her cheeks with scarlet. 

Killian bristles with indignation at her tone. “You haven’t listened to anything I—” 

“I _have_ listened,” she hisses, “To every bullshit excuse you’ve made, and now it’s your turn to listen to _me_. Like you should have done years ago.” He opens his mouth again but she glares him down. “You have _always_ been better than you give yourself credit for, Killian,” she says. “You are so smart, and you’re funny, and you see things in a completely different way than everyone else. You fascinated me from the beginning and I fell so hard for you, so fast it was embarrassing. I think it must have happened that first time I shook your hand.” 

“That makes two of us,” he whispers. 

“And I get why you felt angry and guilty but that was not something you had to deal with alone. I wanted to be there for you, I tried to be there, but you pushed me away and then you made a decision that affected both of our lives without even consulting me!” 

“I— I never dreamed that you could— I had no idea—” 

“Well, you _should_ have! I could _not_ have been more obvious about it, I did everything but wrestle you to the ground and kiss you senseless. But you never saw it and I just thought that I was making a fool of myself, throwing myself at you when you clearly weren’t interested. But now!” She gives a bitter laugh. “Now I find out that you just _refused_ to see it, because you had these ridiculous ideas about me being ‘above’ you!” 

“They were not ridiculous—” 

“They were because I _never_ felt that way!” she shouts, vibrating with frustration and anger. “I _never_ thought I was better than you or that you were a failure! You got dealt a shitty hand by life, yes, but _you_ were the one who let that beat you! I always knew you could be more, and do more, that’s why I kept nagging you to go back to school, I _hated_ seeing you just fold like you did. And I would have told you _all_ of this, _and_ that I loved you _and_ that I would have done anything for us to be together, if you had _just once_ actually _talked_ to me about what you were going through!” 

He shakes his head, trying to deny the truth he hears in her voice. “I couldn’t— you were just so—” 

“So what?” she snaps.

“So... perfect.” 

“Are you _kidding_ me right now?” 

“It’s how you seemed! So beautiful and everyone adored you, meanwhile everything in my life was so ugly and I just— I couldn’t talk about it with you. I couldn’t allow that darkness to cloud your life. I felt unworthy to even touch you, much less hope that you could ever feel about me as I did about you.” 

Emma stares at him as he stares at his hands. He means it. She wants to shake him, to _scream_ at him, but as satisfying as that would be she knows it would do no good. The past is the past and she can’t change any of it, can’t get back the time they’ve wasted. All she can do is try to ensure they don’t waste any more.

“And what about now?” she asks, unable to keep the edge of irony from her voice. “You’ve stopped drinking, your therapy seems to be working. You’re a successful journalist and author with a beautiful girlfriend. I’m a small-town deputy whose life is passing her by because she can’t get over the boy she fell in love with at fifteen. Do you feel ‘worthy’ of my exalted affection now? Can we be friends again?”

“No.” 

The word slaps her in the face and she recoils, fights the tears that try to form behind her eyes. “Fine, then,” she snaps. “I’ll just go—” 

“No!” He reaches out to stop her, snatches his hand back before it can brush hers. “No, I didn’t mean— I didn’t mean it like that. I mean I can’t be _just_ your friend. Trying to bury my feelings in friendship nearly killed me once already.” 

He tosses out this declaration with a hollow nonchalance that wholly fails to hide the agony beneath it. Emma frowns. “What do you mean it nearly killed you?”

Killian is surprised by her question, then surprised at his surprise. When has she ever not heard the things he doesn’t say? He stands up from the sofa and turns away. He knows that if there is any hope for them to move beyond the mistakes of the past then they need to talk about all of them. But he can’t look at her when he reveals this one. “There’s another reason I left Storybrooke,” he says. “Or at least, a reason why I left when I did.” 

Her frown deepens. “What was it?”

“I can be a bit… obsessive sometimes. That’s another thing therapy helped me to understand. I fixate on things and obsess about them and can’t let them go until I’ve pursued them to the end. In some ways it’s good, it helped get my book written, but it can be terribly destructive to focus on one thing until it becomes the _only_ thing in your life that matters. I loved you sobloodymuch and there was nothing else I cared about, and— you were in my head all the time unless I drank and fucked you out of it, but that just drove us further apart.” 

He sits on the sofa again and his fingers flex like he wants to take her hand, but he doesn’t and she doesn’t reach out. He stares at the empty cushion between them and forces his next words out. 

“The night you agreed to go out with Graham I went home and I drank so much I nearly died,” he says, wincing when she gasps. “If Belle weren’t such an early riser I would have. She found me and got me to the hospital in time to save my life. And when I woke up a part of me was _furious_ with her for saving me.”

“Oh, _Killian_.” 

“I didn’t— I didn’t consciously plan to do it but I can’t deny that I wanted to die, there in that moment I didn’t care at all for my own life. I left Storybrooke to save myself because I knew if I had to watch you fall in love with my only friend that next time I’d go somewhere Belle wouldn’t find me. And I knew that I had to find something to live for. Something that didn’t have anything to do with you.”

Slowly she reaches out, lays her hand on his arm. He exhales sharply as his skin tingles and his heart begins to pound. Her touch affects him as strongly as it ever has, stronger even after all their years apart. 

“And now you’re worried that if I was back in your life you would obsess about me again,” she says. 

“I might. It wouldn’t take much.” 

She slides closer, leans in until he can count the freckles on her nose. “I don’t think you will.” 

“How can you know that?” 

“Because you have so much more in your life now than just me. You’ve found other things to live for. Haven’t you?”

Her eyes are warm and her lips look so soft, and Killian wants to howl with anguish. This is everything he’s ever dreamed of, Emma here with him and wanting him, _loving_ him even, and he’s still not sure if he can take what she’s offering. Not sure he can risk losing the peace he’s fought to earn these past five years. He pulls back from her and stumbles to his feet. “I suppose I have,” he concedes. “But I’m still such a mess—” 

“I am too,” she retorts. He turns to look at her, eyebrow raised. “And don’t you even think about arguing with me, we’ve established that you have _very_ messed up ideas about how perfect I am.” 

He can’t help laughing at that, at the sharp, straight-talking wit he loves so much. Emma sighs as the painful tension in her chest begins to loosen. She stands and goes to him, inches in as close as she dares. His eyes widen and his breath catches and still she moves closer. 

“I love you, Killian,” she says softly. “I’ve loved you for eleven years. I know you’re not perfect but I’m not either. And maybe things wouldn’t have worked out for us in the past, maybe we weren’t ready for each other then. But I have tried everything to get over you and none of it’s worked, and that must mean something. And if you love me too then we have to at least try.” 

—

Milah slams the car door shut and flashes a smile at the driver. “I won’t be long,” she says, and he grunts in response. She just has to run up and drop some documents off for Killian to sign. She figures —hopes at least— that he’s still out with Emma. She’s got a key to his apartment, and she plans to leave the folder on the table just inside his door with a post-it note instructing him what to do. She’s not particularly keen to see him, and not only because she has about fifteen more things that need to be done today. 

She doesn’t regret breaking up with him. She’s pushing forty, divorced, comfortably well off thanks to some savvy investments and being very good at her job, and she definitely doesn’t need to be wasting her time and energy trying to cling to a man who’s still hung up on someone else, a woman he insists on elevating to such a height no one else will ever match up. 

And yet, she feels sad. She truly likes Killian, loves him really. And she knows he loves her too, as much as he can, and that if he could let go of Emma they would be happy together. But the looks on their faces when she interrupted them yesterday, the electric tension between them… the room was fairly crackling with it and Milah knew the moment Killian introduced the blonde as a ‘friend from Storybrooke’ that their relationship was over. She accepts it. But she can still feel sad about it. And she can still not be quite ready to see him again. 

She unlocks his door and pushes it open, reaches in with the folder. And then she sees them. Standing as close as they could possibly get without touching, their gazes locked, tension radiating between them. Slowly Killian reaches up to touch Emma’s face with a hand that is visibly trembling. His fingertips trace the contours of her cheek and jaw and his thumb brushes across the dip in her chin. His expression is awed, _reverent_, and Milah tries hard not to roll her eyes. Has he listened to nothing she said? 

“Kiss her, for fuck’s sake,” she mutters under her breath, just as Emma stands on her toes and presses her lips to his. His fingers sink into her hair and his arm wraps around her waist as she clings to his shirtfront by her clenched fists. 

He keeps the kiss soft, though, his posture rigid with the effort of not devouring her as he clearly wants to, and Milah wishes she could smack him upside the head. Emma is no delicate flower, she looks like she could kick his ass in a fight, in fact, but he’s treating her like she’ll shatter if he puts his tongue in her mouth. 

Emma’s having none of it, though. She sinks her own fingers into his hair and tugs at it, nips at his lips until he opens them, then she puts _her_ tongue in _his_ mouth. He tries to hold her back but she hisses at him. “Kiss me like you mean it,” she says against his lips, and Milah can practically see Killian’s control snap. With a growl he backs Emma up to the wall and presses her against it with the length of his body, slants his mouth over hers and kisses her properly. Emma makes a whimpering noise that Milah can fully understand —Killian’s a hell of a kisser— but then she twines her arms around his neck and gives as good as she’s getting. Milah grins as she puts the folder on the table and shuts the door silently behind her. She likes this Emma, she decides. She hopes someday they can be friends. 

—

Killian’s head is spinning wildly and his blood feels thick and hot as it pounds though his veins. He is pressed against Emma from knee to chest, her hair sliding silkily between his fingers and her lips so soft under his, and she is _kissing him back—_ with just as much fervour, her arms tight around his neck and their tongues licking deep into each other’s mouths and he _can’t handle it_. It’s more than he ever dared hope for and also not nearly enough, and he forces himself to break the kiss and get a grip on himself before he loses his mind entirely. 

He’s struggling for breath and so is she, their gasps mingling as they lean their foreheads together and try to form words. Preferably coherent ones, thinks Killian, but really any form of verbal communication will do. 

“That was—” he pants. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “But I want—” 

He cups her cheek. “You sure, love? Because we don’t—” 

She nods. “I’m sure. _So_ sure. I just— “ She pulls his hips into hers. “I want—” 

He groans. “Aye, me too. Let’s—” 

“Yes. _Now._” 

And then her lips are on his again and she is clinging to him, moaning into his mouth as he lifts her up, as she wraps her legs around him and he carries her to his bedroom. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely, lovely members of the CS fandom: To say that the response to this fic has been overwhelming is an understatement. Your reblog notes and AO3 comments and messages have actually brought tears to my eyes. Thank you all, so much. Somehow the little three-sentence note I wrote on my phone late one night has grown into the angsty, secret-love story I’ve been trying to write for some time and never quite managed until now. A HUGE PORTION of the credit for that must go to @thisonesatellite who pushes me and encourages me and sometimes drags me kicking and screaming in the direction she thinks things should go, and she is NEVER WRONG which is so annoying but also immensely valuable. She remains the VERY BEST. 
> 
> In this chapter we have the happy ending. That is all.

He’s dreaming of Emma again. She’s on his boat this time, standing at the railing gazing out at the stormy sea as wind whips her hair around her. She wears nothing but a shirt he recognises as his, her long legs bare and pale in the moonlight. He approaches slowly, knowing that this won’t last. His dreams of her never do. The moment he reaches out to touch her she’ll be gone. 

He moves towards her anyway, he can’t help it, he’s always been drawn to her. Awake or asleep makes no difference. He holds his breath as he reaches out, dreading the moment she dissolves into mist, leaving him empty and alone as ever. 

But she doesn’t. His hands glide over warm skin and she turns to smile at him as the wind blows her hair across his face. It tickles his nose. 

He rubs the tickle away, groaning a protest as he feels consciousness encroach. He’s not ready to leave this dream, not yet. Not ready to let Emma go. 

_Emma._ His nose is tickled again and he rubs it harder. He can smell honeysuckle and cinnamon and sex and his arms are full of something so, so soft. 

He opens his eyes and blinks them rapidly, for a moment wondering if he’s still in his dream. But no, the blonde hair tickling his nose is real and the woman in his arms is Emma, sound asleep and snoring softly, her back nestled against his front and completely naked. 

So is he. Killian nuzzles his nose in the crook of Emma’s neck and breathes deeply as memories of the previous night come flooding back. A night like none other he’s ever experienced. He’s had a lot of sex but never before made love, and while he feels a bit silly making that distinction he can’t deny the truth of it, or that it was a far different act last night with Emma than with any of the other women he’s known. And he has always, always woken up alone. 

He strokes his hand over Emma’s hip and down her thigh but she doesn’t stir. She’s a deep sleeper, he thinks, and feels a thrill at the knowledge. There is so much he’s looking forward to discovering about her. 

He presses a kiss just below her ear and eases out of the bed, careful not to jostle her. She mumbles something that sounds like _too damn early_ and rolls onto her stomach, throwing her arm over the pillow and burying her face in it. He grins as he pulls on his jeans and grabs his phone, and heads into the kitchen to make some coffee. 

As it brews he calls Belle. She answers on the first ring and his grin widens. She was expecting him to call yesterday. 

“Killian,” she says eagerly. “What news?”

“I talked to Emma.” 

“And? What did she say?” 

“Many things that were hard for me to hear. But I needed to hear them. And—”

“_And?_” 

“She said she loves me.” Just speaking those words aloud sends joy surging through him. He still can’t quite believe all this is real, though he is beginning to, and his joy is chased by a flutter of fear. This level of happiness is going to take some getting used to, he suspects. He imagines it will be some time before he stops waiting for it to be snatched away from him. 

“_And??_” encourages Belle. “What did you say?” 

“Eh, I told her thanks but she’s not really my type.”

“Killian!” 

“I told her I love her too, of course,” he laughs. “I told her everything.” 

“_Everything_ everything?” 

“All of it.” He doesn’t elaborate but he knows Belle understands. “That was yesterday afternoon and she’s, ah, still here.” He rubs at _that_ spot on his neck, the one just behind his ear that always tingles when he’s embarrassed. Odd, he thinks, he’s never been bashful about Belle knowing who he slept with before. 

“Good.” There’s a hint of tears in Belle’s voice. “I’m so proud of you, Killian. Don’t let her go again.”

“I won’t,” he says, and it’s a vow. 

He hears a faint footfall behind him and seconds later slender arms wind around his waist and a soft body presses against his back. Lips brush light kisses across his shoulder blades and he sighs. “Belle, I have to go,” he says. 

“Of course,” she replies. “Tell Emma I said hi.” 

“I will.” He hangs up the phone and turns around, cups Emma’s face in his hands and kisses her. “Good morning,” he says. 

“Morning.” Her hair is mussed and her eyes still hazy with sleep. She’s so beautiful she steals his breath, and he kisses her again. He’d happily spend the rest of his life kissing her. 

“Mmm,” she says as her arms twine around his neck. “Do I smell coffee?” 

“You do. Would you like some?” 

“I definitely would,” she murmurs, but makes no move to release him. Her lips find his again, open and inviting. He pulls her closer, his hand sneaking under the hem of her shirt —_his_ shirt, just like in his dream— to find her bare beneath it. He groans and backs her up against the kitchen island, plundering her mouth as his hand slides higher. When it encounters metal, warmed by her skin, it stops. 

He pulls back and so does she, looking up at him with wary, hopeful eyes. He brushes aside the placket of the shirt to reveal a pendant on a long chain, nestled between her breasts. A very familiar pendant. 

“I didn’t see this last night,” he says, in a voice rough with emotion.

“I wasn’t wearing it then. I had it in my pocket. Yesterday was the first time I haven’t worn it around my neck in—” 

“Five years?” he finishes for her. 

“Yeah.” Her smile is faintly embarrassed. 

He kisses her softly, rests his forehead against hers and runs his fingers through her hair. “How would you like to go sailing later?” he asks. 

She looks surprised at the non sequitur. “Really?”

“Aye. It’s supposed to be calm seas today.” 

“And you still have your boat? Even though you— well, live on land now?” 

“Of course I still have my boat. I couldn’t get rid of her, she’s the love of my life.”

Emma’s eyebrows rise. “_Is _she?” 

“Aye.” He grins. “Along with you, obviously.” 

“Oh, obviously.” 

He pulls her back into his embrace and she snuggles against him with a happy sigh that makes his heart soar. “So what do you say, Swan?” he says, low in her ear. “A picnic on the boat for lunch?”

“Sounds wonderful.” 

—

When they arrive at his mooring Killian takes her hand and guides her around to the front of the boat, positions her at the end of the jetty and stands there, grinning, his eyebrows dancing a jig on his forehead. 

“What?” she asks. 

“Exercise your powers of observation, _Swan_,” he says, with extra emphasis on her name. 

“What am I missing?” She looks around then back at Killian standing in front of his boat, right next to where the name is painted in large bold lettering and— _oh_. Emma’s mouth drops open and she feels tears begin to gather in her eyes. 

“You named your boat for me?” she whispers. 

“Aye,” he says gently. “You’re not the only one who’s clung to mementos these five years.” 

“Oh, Killian.” She launches herself into his arms, buries her face in his neck. “I love you.” 

“I love you,” he replies, cradling her close. It’s a long time before they pull apart. 

—

They sail out towards the Atlantic until the land is just a slim sliver on the horizon, a faint line of grey between the blues of sea and sky. Killian adjusts the sails to let the boat drift while Emma spreads a blanket on the deck and lays their picnic on it.

It’s not much as picnics go, just peanut butter sandwiches and apple slices and a thermos of hot chocolate, but they devour it hungrily.

“Why does this taste so good?” Emma asks around a mouthful of apple. 

“There’s something about the sea that sharpens the appetite,” Killian replies. “Which is handy when all you’ve got to eat is fish.” 

“I bet.” She gives him a sympathetic smile as she grabs another sandwich. Someday, he thinks, he’ll tell her about the difficult times he experienced in his years of travelling. But not today. 

“So you never told me how long you’re staying,” he says, as casually as he can manage. 

“I have two weeks off work,” she replies, licking peanut butter off her thumb. “But…” She glances at him, looking hesitant. 

“But what?” he encourages. 

“But I was thinking. About what you said yesterday.” 

“I said quite a few things yesterday.” 

“What you said about my job. And how I used to want to be a social worker.”

“Ah.” 

“Yeah. And you were right, I did want that. I’d forgotten how passionate I used to be about women’s advocacy, and my job— I like it well enough but it’s never been what I really wanted to do with my life. So I was thinking.” She pauses again as she sips some chocolate, her fingers toying nervously with the cup of the thermos. 

“What were you thinking, love?” 

She takes a deep breath.“I was thinking I might apply to grad school,” she says, all in a rush. “Here. In New York.” 

Killian’s heart lodges in his throat. “Do you mean that?” 

“Yeah.”

“What about your family? Storybrooke?” 

“I’m twenty-six, I can’t live at home forever. My parents will survive. As for Storybrooke—” She shrugs. “It’s not your place. And I want to be with you.” 

His love for her engulfs him like a storm surge, nearly overwhelms him with its force. He leans across the picnic blanket and kisses her, harder than he intended but she doesn’t seem to mind, kissing him back with a fervour equal to his own. She tastes of peanut butter and chocolate and _home_. 

She grabs the collar of his jacket to pull him closer and they overbalance, tumbling onto the deck in a tangle of limbs and laughter. Killian rolls onto his back and Emma sprawls across his chest, still laughing as she cups his face in her hand, tracing the thin scar on his cheek with her thumb. “You know,” she says, “If I do go to school here I’ll need a place to stay.” 

“My love,” he breathes. “You can stay with me as long as you need. Stay forever.” 

“Forever.” Emma smiles. “That might be nearly long enough.” 


End file.
